2-Day Poultry Exchange Visits

To share the good results of the farmers from our two poultry activities in Douniean and Thachampa, we invited PAHWs, poultry farmers and village chiefs from 12 other villages to an exchange visit at the beginning of August. Staff from the District and Province Agriculture and Forestry Offices joined the visit as well.

Mentors from the faculty presented the objectives of the two different activities:
– A model village for poultry vaccination, where all poultry farmers in the village are vaccinating their poultry against Fowl Cholera and Newcastle disease, thanks to a local regulation, and recording their farms’ performances, to be compared to the poultry production level with another village where farmers don’t vaccinate;
– A village where 12 model farmers have been selected to apply improved farming technics in addition with vaccination;

Then PAHWs from Douniean and Thachampa presented their role within the activities: organizing the vaccination campaign, giving advice on farming practices to farmers during mentoring visits, and helping to deliver trainings. The village chief from Thachampa also explained how the activity has been enforced and made sustainable by the setting up of a local regulation, making poultry vaccination compulsory in the village.

Finally, we went to visit three selected farmers from each villages to have a look at their farm.They explained about the changes they have made in their farms thanks to the project and the impact it had on their poultry production.

Visiting farmers had the opportunity to ask questions to mentors, PAHWs and farmers and they were especially interested in vaccination protocol and techniques, economical impact of the poultry activity in the households, and the feed formula used by farmers They requested to have a poultry manual to have access to all this information, so that will be our next project!

In the end, we were very happy to see that the rain and the very muddy roads didn’t discourage the farmers to come and to visit the farms

From farm to farm, under the rain:

A poultry farmer in Thachampa:

Somphone, PAHW from Thachampa explaining about feed formula:

Checking the chicken house in a farm in Thachampa:

PAHWs and village chief of Thachampa, explaining about the local regulation:

A model farmer in Douniean showing her farm to visitors:

Another model farmer in Douniean showing her farm to visitors:

All participants on the second day of visit:

Malavanh and Bounlerth showing impact of vaccination on the number of hatched chickens: